Elgg Web Hosting

OPTIMIZED HOSTING FOR Elgg

We offer the best feature on the market

Elgg empowers individuals, groups and institutions to create their own fully-featured social environment. Elgg, started in 2004, is an open source social engine which powers all kinds of social environments - from education and business to martial arts and rugby. If you are looking for a professional social intranet or want to run a site for your organisation, Elgg is a great choice.

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Interserver provides

shared, vps and dedicated hosting powered by Elgg

Elgg is a social networking software that makes it easy to set up social communities on your own
website. They have been around since 2004 and continue to push out innovative updates on a regular
basis. This is an open source platform built with PHP and MySQL, which makes it very easy to work with.
The entire platform is free to use for any project you’re interested in making.

Overall they have done a great job of providing people with everything they need to make their own
social networks. This platform is commonly used for making university social networks, company social
networks, family social networks and more. No matter what your goals, this is an excellent option to
consider.

Star Rating:

Elgg Pros

Price

This system is free, and always has been. They do accept donations, but they aren’t
required and you get access to the full platform without having to give any money.

Easy to Use

Both administrators and users will be able to use this site very easily once they get
used to it.

Expandable

You can expand the features using plugins (widgets) and other options.

Elgg Cons

Intuitiveness

Not everything is set up in a way that really comes naturally to most people.
With this in mind, make sure you are reading their documentation and instructions when
creating your social network.

Simple

Compared to some of the other social networking platforms out there, this one feels a
little too simple.

Elgg Review

Initial Install

If you are hosting Elgg on an InterServer hosting package you can have your site up and running in just a
few minutes thanks to our one-click install scripts. Once it is installed, you will need to create a user. It
is important to note that the first user you create is the administrator account. This is an odd way of
doing it, but it works fine. After that, logging in and making initial settings updates is not difficult and
won’t take too long.

Plugins

They do have a fair number of plugins, and having third party developers make their own plugins is fairly
simple. From what I could find, the plugins are all free and can be used to add a lot of functionality to
this system. Actually installing and using them is all easy to understand thanks to their module
configuration.

Themes

Changing the way your social network looks and feels is easy with themes. They do allow you to install
and active themes quickly and easily. While they don’t seem to have any themes available on their
website, you can find them through third party developers. You can also have themes developed
yourself without much trouble.

Customization

This is a nice social network platform out of the box. A lot of the features and other options can be
customized to your liking, and so can the theme of the site. Beyond that, however, there isn’t a ton of
extra customization available. Of course, it is open source so if you really want to you can go in and
make whatever changes you desire. Most people, however, will use a mostly out of the box
configuration other than some optional modules.

SEO Friendly

This social network system isn’t going to help you to rank well in the search engines on its own. Of
course, a busy social network does create a lot of content, so that can help. They also have a blog
option that can make it easier to bring in traffic from the search engines. To put it simply, the SEO isn’t
bad with this platform, but it isn’t great either.

Cost of Running

The cost of running this platform is one of the best perks of using it. It is completely free to use for as
long as you want without any restrictions. For most people who are looking to have a small community,
a good InterServer shared hosting package will be sufficient too, which will save you money. If your
social network becomes quite popular, however, you will want to upgrade to a higher end hosting
package like one of our VPS’s or dedicated servers.

Other Programs Like it

While Elgg is a great social networking system, it is not the right choice for everyone. If you don’t think
it will meet your needs, try one of these other options. They can all be installed using a one-click
installation script included with all InterServer hosting packages.

Notable Websites using it

Final Thoughts

Elgg is one of the best free social networking platforms out there. While it is missing some things
compared to the software packages that cost thousands of dollars, that is to be expected. For those
who just want a simple social network community for their site, this is an excellent option to consider. It
can be installed in just minutes and then you can try it out to see if it is a good fit for you.

Automatic Updates

We do all the hard work so you don't have to!

Daily Backups

We keep up to 30 daily backup copies of your Elgg site.

Autoupdates

We update Elgg core and plugins to keep your site protected.

99.9% Uptime Guarantee

Interserver is proud to guarantee that our uptime will never drop below 99.9%

Award-Winning 24/7 Support

We make it easy to get online, but if you do need help or just want to talk to a live person, our experts are available 24/7